A lawsuit that could potentially be worth $1 billion was filed against the University in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Wednesday. The plaintiffs, approximately 800 Guatemalans who were subjected to medical experiments from 1946 through the 1950s involving forcible infection with sexually transmitted diseases, as well as family members of the subjects, filed the suit.
The lawsuit names the University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Health System Corp. as defendants.
The study was conducted by the United States government. The Rockefeller Fund, a philanthropic foundation, and pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb were named co-defendants. Bristol-Myers Squibb provided the penicillin used for the testing. The lawsuit claimed that the Rockefeller Fund worked with Hopkins and provided additional funding for the STI research.
In an email sent to the Hopkins community, University President Ronald J. Daniels, Dean of the Medical Faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine Dr. Paul B. Rothman and Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Michael J. Klag denied the validity of the lawsuit.
“This was not a Johns Hopkins study. Johns Hopkins did not initiate, pay for, direct or conduct the study in Guatemala. Participation in the review of government research was then and is today separate from being a Johns Hopkins employee, and no nonprofit university or hospital has ever been held liable for a study conducted by the U.S. Government,” the email stated.
As part of a government advisory panel, doctors at Hopkins, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania among other institutions allegedly signed off on the experiments that involved the testing of penicillin when the drug was first being explored.
A Hopkins physician chaired the committee when the proposed experiments were under consideration, and three other connected doctors were on the committee.
The experiments included purposeful infection of patients with syphilis and gonorrhea while withholding treatment through injections and spreading infected gel on subjects’ genitals.
Doctors infected prostitutes, soldiers, prisoners and mental health patients. The subjects of the experiments were unaware at the time of what was being done to them.
Johns Hopkins Medicine denied all responsibility for the experiments through spokeswoman Kim Hoppe.
“Johns Hopkins expresses profound sympathy for individuals and families impacted by the deplorable 1940s syphilis study conducted by the U.S. Government in Guatemala. This was not a Johns Hopkins study,” Hoppe wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
“Johns Hopkins did not initiate, pay for, direct or conduct the study in Guatemala. No nonprofit university or hospital has ever been held liable for a study conducted by the U.S. Government.”
In 2010, President Barack Obama apologized to former Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom for the experiments. There was a previous lawsuit in 2012 against the University that was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton.
“[T]he pleas of victims for relief are more appropriately directed to the political branches of the federal government,” Hoppe wrote. “This lawsuit, however, is an attempt by plaintiffs’ counsel to exploit a historic tragedy for monetary gain. Plaintiffs’ legal claims are not supported by the facts. We will vigorously defend the lawsuit.”
According to The Baltimore Sun, 124 people died from complications of the forced procedures. The lawsuit is seeking $75,000 in damages for each of the nine counts and as well as $1 billion in additional punitive damages.
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